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Open captions

State and Federal Governments around the globe are toughening up on public sector web accessibility. The latest case is the Alaskan Juneau School District, which felt the wrath of that state’s Government because of a complaint from the public that their websites aren’t inclusive for all needs.

After receiving the disability discrimination complaint, Alaskan authorities undertook a rigorous investigation and found out that ten other schools, educational groups, and institutions (including the Montana School for the Deaf and blind) also had accessibility issues on their websites.

The Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) has published preliminary exemption orders for 34 channels provided on Telstra Pay TV for mobile phones. These include both free-to-air channels such as ABC1, and channels available on Foxtel.

On Global Accessibility Awareness Day, 19 May 2016, the New Zealand Captioning Working Group submitted a petition to Mojo Mathers, Green MP, with more than 2,300 signatures in a bid for the House of Representatives to legislate closed captioning across all relevant media.

Captions are not just essential for Deaf and hearing impaired people. Their power to assist literacy, especially in developing countries, has been demonstrated on a massive scale by organisations such as Planet Read. Another program, partnered with Planet Read, takes the same concept into new areas, including the possibility of using any language.

With so many big movies being released for the Christmas season, including Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Jurassic World and Arthur Christmas, it’s important for people with a hearing or vision impairment to find out the most accessible way to experience them, in a cinema session offering captions or audio description.

Access All Areas Film Festival (AAAFF) will be celebrating the International Day of People with Disability on 3 December with a free screening of Last Cab to Darwin starring Michael Caton and Jacki Weaver.

Streaming live events on the internet allows people who cannot attend to experience the performance. A more recent innovation is to include accessibility services to allow people with disabilities to also enjoy the show.

Sydney Opera House is providing a live-streamed, fully-accessible version of Handel’s Messiah on Sunday 6 December 2015 from 12.50pm AEDT.